by Guy Antibes
Simara nodded and twisted her fingers in her hand.
“You might not have been,” Igar said, “unless you demanded I let you in with your friend like you just did.”
Simara sighed. “I needed more than one friend to have the strength to withstand rejection from you,” she said.
Jack felt very ill at ease during their conversation. Quist walked in, breaking the conversation and the tension in the room.
“This is Ozzie Quist, master. He is a former wizard.”
“Burned out and unrecovered, I am afraid,” Quist said.
“I am Igar Khotes,” Simara’s father extended his gloved hand. “Such things happen in Lajia too. I don’t think that is any consolation.”
“It isn’t,” Quist said, “but I’m used to my condition.” He gave the older man a smile.
“The meal is served,” a woman said standing at the doorway.
“We will talk again before you leave, Simara, in private.”
She nodded. Her father took her hand and led her out of the room.
Jack walked with Quist, who smelled of horses. Jack wondered if he smelled the same, but he couldn’t tell. They had constantly been riding for days.
They sat down in a pleasant dining room. The shuttered doors opened out to the nice afternoon, letting in a fragrant breeze from a patio filled with bright colored flowers.
Igar asked Tanner to finish the description of the trip after Rugiz. “You have fallen in with true friends,” Simara’s father said after Tanner finished. “I can see two of you are mercenaries. Am I right?”
“We have worked for a wizard named Fasher Tempest,” Helen said. “In fact, we all have at one time or another.”
“Even you, daughter?”
Simara nodded. “Henry was the one in contact with Wizard Tempest. I accompanied him. I thought it would be as much a favor as anything, but I was caught up in what the Alderachean patriarch was doing, so we fled to Lajia.
He looked at Jack. “You are the wizard’s helper?”
Jack nodded.
“That is the Corandian term of a wizard that we call a Takia's font, a gift from our goddess.”
“I’ve never thought of myself as a font before,” Jack said.
“You have tested him?” Igar said to his daughter.
Simara smiled at Jack. “I have. He was able to infuse at a touch.”
Quist sighed. “Not me, I’m afraid, although I can borrow a little power from him if we make contact.”
Igar nodded ruefully. “I can’t help you, but I wish I could. My teaching days are over. Simara was my last pupil. Now I am retired and writing a wizardry book. It is a memoir more than anything,” he said.
Jack could feel the man’s resignation. He remembered his grandfather talked a bit like that after he quit work before he passed on. This visit wasn’t the light family reunion he had envisioned. Simara seemed sad, Igar seemed sad, the servant seemed resentful, but Jack decided to do a little show and tell.
“I brought three objects of power with me. You might want to examine them.”
Igar’s eyebrows rose as Simara gave Jack an odd look. Something suddenly wasn’t right about Jack’s efforts to improve the mood.
“I will show you a few of my own,” Igar said. “I will show you my wizardry collection after we eat.”
Jack couldn’t read Simara’s expression as she began to eat. Jack wondered if he had blundered into something he shouldn’t have. The meal wasn’t as good as it should have been if Jack’s stomach wasn’t tumbling wondering what he had done wrong. The others didn’t seem to notice anything except Quist looked a bit uneasy, but that wasn’t an altogether uncommon state for the man.
The meal was finished. “Feel free to sit while Jack and I have a little conversation. Come with me,” Igar said to Jack.
He passed Simara who put her hand up to say something, but then put it back down and bowed her head. Something was definitely wrong. Jack took a deep breath. He was out of his depth with an experienced wizard like Simara’s father, but he didn’t know how to get out of a visit to his study. He shook his head. Nothing could be so bad.
The older wizard shut his study door.
“Have a seat,”
Jack sat in an easy chair facing the desk.
“You have three objects of power, you said?”
After pulling out the seeker cube, he held it in his palm. “This points to the Serpent’s Orb that Tanner told you about.” The blue edge still pointed north.
Igar examined it. “Can I hold it?”
Jack placed it in his palm, and the blue disappeared.
“Oh, it is locked to you.”
“I didn’t realize it until I was on a ship to Lajia. The patriarch couldn’t make it work, either.” He took out his wand. “This is more mundane, I understand.”
“A wand? It is imbued so it will project wizard bolts?”
Jack nodded.
“May I see it?” Igar handed over the cube. He looked it over. “Not quite an object of power in the classical sense, but again, it is imbued, so it only responds to your touch.” He looked at Jack’s waist. “And the sword?”
Jack drew the sword. “I picked this up at a market town.”
Igar held it and closed his eyes. “This is also imbued to you. How could you have bought this on your way? It is keyed to your power.”
“Just how does that work?” Jack said. His mind a whir with a new revelation he hadn’t expected to receive in Igar’s study.
“A powerful wizard uses a Fifth Manipulation spell to meld his power with an object. That is why I am surprised this Aramore Gant stole the Serpent’s Orb. It has to be keyed to your master. I would be surprised if the custodian of the object was able to use it. Perhaps he thought he could power his way through the key. Sometimes that works, and sometimes it doesn’t. That kind of thing depends on how much power a wizard can channel through an object.” Igar shook his head. “I am mystified. What does the sword do?”
“It enhances my ability to wield it. I’m a poor swordsman without it and a mediocre one with it in my hands.” Jack wasn’t about to talk about its defensive capabilities with Igar.
Igar looked sideways at Jack. “Is that all?”
Jack shrugged. “There might be other things, but maybe I haven’t had the opportunity for them to appear.”
“I’m sure there are more. That is a powerful object. I can feel its power when I get close to touching it.” Igar went to a book in the bookcase and retrieved it. “This is one of my objects,” he said.
Jack leaned forward as the Simara’s father flipped the cover open revealing a cut out holding a golden finger bowl.
“What does it do?”
“I don’t know, actually,” Igar said with a smile. “It is, like your objects, keyed to someone else. I intend to unlock it so I can document it in my book, but so far it acts just like a little bowl. Perhaps it collects water from the air. I don’t know. Put your hand close. See if you can feel its power.”
Jack had never tried to detect an object before without touching, but he put his hand close and could feel tingling in his hand. As he withdrew his hand, he did so slowly. He could detect the object from about two feet. That surprised him. Perhaps it was all the exercising he had done.
“I can feel it about here.” He put his hand closer and stopped when he could sense the tingling.
“I am sure you are a Takia’s font. That makes you a valuable person.”
Jack narrowed his eyes. “Why would I be valuable, to whom?”
“To my organization, of course,” Igar took off a glove revealing a hand with black tips on the fingers.
“You are a member of the Black Finger Society?” Jack asked.
“Why do you think Simara fled to Corand. She wasn’t ready to join,” Igar’s pleasant countenance changed, “despite my insistence. But you won’t refuse,” Igar spoke a word that Jack didn’t understand.
A pressure assaulted Jack’s forehead. His hand we
nt to the pommel of his sword, and a burning pain traveled from the sword up his arm and burned his brain. He shut his eyes tight and then opened them up again, staring at Igar. “I refuse,” Jack said.
“Impossible!” Igar said. He pointed to the sword. “That saved you!” He reached over and grasped the sword, his eyes grew wide before they rolled up in his head, and the man dropped to his seat, senseless.
Jack could see his chest rise and fall. He grabbed the bowl and put it in his shirt and locked the door to the study before teleporting through the door to the other side. Luckily, no one was in the hallway.
“We need to leave,” Jack said to his companions as soon as he entered the sitting room. “You can leave or stay as you wish,” he said to Simara.
“I’m ready to go,” she said.
They quickly left. Simara looked back at her home as they rode quickly through the picturesque town. Jack might have liked to stay for another day, but that was impossible. He had no idea what the sword had done to Igar Khotes.
When they were about halfway to Notiz Road, Jack stopped them and told them what happened in the study.
“I thought it was something like that,” Simara said. “But I would have sworn you would have left that study with black fingers. Father, in a flash of sanity, stopped before he forced me to join him. That was when I left home.”
Jack could guess a reaction like that, but she would have had to have been strong to withstand the coercion. “What would have happened to me?”
“I’m not sure with your power. The conversion spell isn’t a permanent thing, and the stronger a wizard the less permanent. All I know is that Black Finger wizards turn away from helping others. There are no Black Finger healers, for example,” Simara said.
Jack put his hand on the pommel of the sword. “The sword protected me from a coercion spell, probably something similar to what the patriarch used on you. For some reason, I’m not sure I would have been converted, anyway.”
Jack looked at Simara. Why didn’t her father convert her when she went into the house before they did? He was confused about the entire Black Finger thing and would have to talk to Tanner about it when Simara wasn’t around.
“Father is powerful enough for that, I am sure. I thought we would be able to reconcile, but if he tried to turn you, I am sure his reticence has gone since I left for Corand.”
“I took this,” Jack said. “I couldn’t resist it.”
“The golden bowl. Father could never find out what it did. You stole it from him?”
“I couldn’t leave it behind. I can’t explain why. Perhaps I wanted some compensation for him assaulting me. I never claimed to be better than anyone else,” he said. Even Jack could hear the defensiveness in his own voice. “I am sorry for taking it, but then I’m not. Don’t expect me to return it.”
“I don’t,” Tanner said. “Spoils of war or something like that. I wouldn’t leave a potentially powerful object in the hands of my enemy, anyway. You did the right thing by taking it.”
“Keep it,” Helen said. “I’ve taken worse.”
Jack was surprised his friends didn’t scold him. Even Simara didn’t say any more, but as he touched the bowl, he could feel some of his power seep into the thing. Perhaps that was how the sword was keyed to him. He decided to read the wizardry manual to see if he could find out something on his own before telling the others.
Chapter Twenty
~
T he Notiz Road became wider with stretches of pavement as it began to rise from the plain that stretched from Rugiz to the roadside inn where they would spend the night. Jack looked at a map of northern Lajia posted on a wall of the inn, tracing his finger up the road to the mountains. Simara had no idea where the patriarch would stop.
She had gone out with Helen to the village not far from the road. Quist had bought a jug of wine and decided to line his mind with a hazy forgetfulness. Tanner worked out in the stable yard. Jack was tempted to join him, but he begged off since he wanted to read in the unlocked wizard manual. The golden fingerbowl was up in the room he shared with Tanner, now charged with power since it didn’t seem to pull any power from him after two days of constant contact.
He sat on his bed, looking out his window that looked out on the Notiz Road and pulled out his book. He flipped the pages but didn’t seem to get any inspiration on what level of manipulation was required for the bowl, so he sought out information about linking objects. Finding what he hoped was the right section Jack quickly discovered that linking objects was a Fifth Manipulation. The concept was akin to linking telepathically with another wizard. He skipped the dangers associated with doing so and found the section he sought.
Imbuing a link to an object of power was a very personal spell, he found. Wizards would have to discover the proper trigger on their own. There was no universal word like there was for the more mundane spells. The book had been explicit that trigger words for more advanced spells had to be discovered. That fact matched what Jack had learned from Quist and to a lesser extent from Simara. He read more warnings against hasty experimentation.
He figured that would make finding out what the golden finger bowl did a more dangerous proposition. If he wanted to experiment, Jack decided he would need an open space. Before he left his room, he brushed through the book to see if it said anything about wizard’s helpers, but the term was never used, so that didn’t provide him with any extra insight.
He took the bowl, along with his other objects and the book, downstairs and stopped Tanner.
“I’m going to play around with my objects in the field behind the inn,” Jack said. “So if you are looking for me that is where I will be.”
“You mean that is where we will find the body?” Tanner said. He put his hand on Jack’s arm. “Be careful. When you experiment try to keep the power you use to a minimum.”
“I will,” Jack said as he walked through a back gate onto the field. He walked along old rows that hadn’t yet been planted, but since a few goats, sheep, and cattle were roaming around, he guessed whoever farmed the place left the open space fallow for the current growing season. He stood in the center and noticed the stone fence lining the edges. A well was in the corner closest to the inn along with a covered feeding structure.
Jack looked up into the sky and let the sun bathe his face for a moment while he collected his thoughts. He pulled out his sword and immediately felt the weapon lighten as he swung it. If Tanner peeked at him, he would probably laugh at his smoother clunkiness. Jack imagined fighting a battle and went through the kinds of forms that Tanner used. His legs felt lighter and his arms stronger.
He stopped and looked at the introduction to Fifth Manipulation spells. The sword was definitely a Fifth Manipulation object, not a First like he had originally thought. The weapon had to have been someone’s treasure. How could he have just chanced upon it in a market tent already keyed to him? Could it do it on its own if he recharged it enough?
The wand was fully charged, so Jack aimed at a spot on a rock twenty paces away and hit it with a wizard’s bolt. He tried something new and found a knob on another rock and aimed off the target a bit, but concentrated on hitting the knob. He said the trigger word and the bolt hit the knob, not the where he had aimed. That was a new capability, Jack thought.
Finally, he pulled out the golden bowl. What could it do? He said ‘Fill’ with power and nothing happened, but he had expected it to fill with water. After twenty or more words, nothing worked. He examined the bowl, and when he held it at a certain angle, it concentrated the sun’s light and bathed his face with light and warmth. Could this be an offensive weapon using light?
He adjusted the reflection of the bowl so that it bathed another rock and said “Light.” A beam of light emitted from the bowl and illuminated the rock. Jack walked closer and repeated the trick. The surface of the rock began to smoke. He kept the power to a trickle and barely spoke the word. Jack examined the effect and found that there was some dried moss on the rock
that had blackened. With some experimentation with his thoughts and applying his power, he could focus the beam, but when he tried to increase the power too much the bowl quickly heated up, and Jack had to drop it. In that respect, it was like the wand.
He knew the bowl would create a light that burned. Jack wondered if it would create fire too. If “light” worked, maybe “fire” might also. He held the bowl, aiming it at a rock and whispered, “Fire.” A beam of fire, more substantial than the light before and even denser than a wizard’s bolt, shot out from the middle of the bowl. Jack immediately dropped the object since it was as hot as a pot on his mother’s stove. He ran to the trough at the corner of the field to cool his hand.
By the time he picked up the bowl from the ground, it had cooled. He looked at it and wondered if he could do something else with it, but remembering the words of caution in the manual, Jack figured he wouldn’t go further.
In the hour or so that he had spent in the field, Jack learned more than he expected on his own, but any more experimentation might include a different level of trigger words, or expose him to more injury, and his pulsating hand wasn’t ready to do that kind of thing again.
As he walked across the field, he thought that any wizard could create some level of fire, but the bowl was a focus, and that made it unique. A wizard would have more power and more control with the bowl. Jack shuddered at the idea of being hit by a concentrated beam of fire from the thing. It scared him more than a wizard bolt would because of all the damage burning could do. As he thought more, he determined that the sword was still the best of the objects of power followed by the wand and, with a little disappointment he classified the golden bowl as the least of his objects. He hadn’t imbued the golden bowl, but he had discovered it wasn’t necessary, and he had already done more with the bowl than Igar Khotes had done.
Tanner no longer practiced in the stable yard. Jack had expected the two women to return, but they weren’t in evidence downstairs. He climbed the stairs and found Quist’s door open. His things were spread all over the floor. Jack ran to the room he shared with Tanner, which was turned over as well. His spirits sank as he walked more slowly to the room Helen shared with Simara. The door was closed but unlocked. Someone had turned that room upside down too. He inspected all the public rooms at the inn, but there was no evidence of them anywhere.